UTNAPISHTIM AND THE PRESERVER OF LIFE

The mythological so-called "biblical flood stories" are based upon the Babylonian version of a much older Sumerian original, written in Akkadian cuneiform scripts pressed upon baked clay tablets, illustrating the famous, extremely archaic Epic of Gilgamesh.

According to Ancient Mesopotamian mythology (written circa 2500 BCE), Utnapishtim (the biblical equivalent of Noah) was the heroic survivor of a "Great Flood."  His extraordinary tale was fully depicted in the aforementioned saga, representing the source of some biblical narratives, including Judeo-Christian myths, such as Noah and his purported Ark.

In conformity with this Babylonian transliteration, however, the Great Flood was cast upon the world by the Sumerian god Enlil (in Akkadian Elil), simply because mankind was too noisy, thus precluding him from sleeping at night.

Enlil - the Mesopotamian God of Wind and Breath

Upon hearing about such dreadful plans, his younger brother - the god Enki (in Akkadian Ea), always deemed as humanity’s main protector, secretly informed Utnapishtim - via a dream - of the upcoming devastation, along with detailed instructions vis-à-vis the construction of a special, massive vessel (named the Preserver of Life).

Upon conclusion of such craft, and immediately prior to the foretold inundation, this celestial selected hero was poised to gather his family, along with a pair of each existing beast, bird, and insect to be rescued, do that the Earth could be duly repopulated…  Moreover, consistent with his divine directives, Utnapishtim also included an accomplished sailor among its crew, so that the "Preserver of Life" could be duly steered.

By and large, the successful execution of his convoluted task, considering his valiant efforts, Utnapishtim and his wife were granted the gift of immortality, in recompense for his great deed.

Can one write in any modern language with ancient Sumerian cuneiform script?

The Standard of Ur - British Museum, London, United Kingdom

While I am not duly accredited with the necessary credentials to provide any scholastically valid pronouncement vis-à-vis this excellent query, based on what I do know, I am nearly certain that texts written in any language (modern or otherwise) could be easily transliterated into the marvelous, Sumerian created cuneiform script.

The cuneiform characters or symbols, if you will, was originally developed by the Sumerians circa 3500 BCE (when the Proto-Cuneiform was invented to facilitate the control and accounting of a rapidly growing trade). It embodies a logo-syllabic script that was used to write at least fifteen languages of the Ancient Near East, and it was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the very beginning of the Common Era (also known as Anno Domini-”AD”).

The first foreign vernacular which adopted this archaic script was Akkadian, which was itself adopted, and slightly enhanced by the Babylonians, and then naturally embraced by the Amorite influenced version thereof by the Assyrians, their northern cultural and religious “cousins.”

In view of the highly successful use of the cuneiform characters throughout Mesopotamia,* the Assyrian version was successfully adapted to write the Indo-European Hittite** language sometime around the 17th century BCE. The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora consist of Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, Old Persian and Urartian.

Because the cuneiform insignias successfully spread and fundamentally impacted every distinct language around the regions in the vicinity of modern Iraq, and specially because it could be effectively used to write the first Indo-European language - Hittite - I have no doubt that it could be easily implemented to transliterate texts composed in virtually all modern European languages (except for Finnish and Hungarian, which to not belong to this large group), along with Indian dialects like Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, and Tamil.

Finally, my conclusion may be, perhaps, validated if one compares it to our current ability to transliterate into modern European languages, every text that utilizes distinct scripts, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew and Arabic.

*Mesopotamia, which is an original word coined by Ancient Greece, namely, Μεσοποταμία, meaning the "land between rivers" represents a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent.*** This area occupies most of present-day Iraq and Kuwait.

**Hittite is the first historically identified, to date, "Indo-European language", which includes Germanic dialects such as English, Dutch, German, and Norwegian, among others, along with the Roman tongues, such as French, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish, and the Celtic ones (for instance, Welsh, Breton, and the Scottish Gaelic). Additionally, this fundamental block of idioms include Indo-Iranian, Greek, Armenian and even Albanian.

***The Fertile Crescent is the boomerang-shaped region of the Middle East that was home to some of the earliest human civilizations. Also known as the “Cradle of Civilization,” this area was the birthplace of a large number of technological innovations, including writing, the wheel, agriculture, and the use of irrigation.

The Fertile Crescent

Indo-European Hittite Cuneiform